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Tech NewsExclusive: Elon Musk Explains Lusty Floor Tweets
Yesterday was SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s birthday. But instead of getting some loving from his beautiful girlfriend or perhaps one of his fancy cars (they can do that now, right?), Musk apparently decided to pop a few Ambien and craft a love poem to the floor. You see, last night, he sent the following nuggets … Continued
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Tech NewsApple Unveils World’s Least Portable Laptop
You can say a lot about Apple—it brought smartphones and personal computers to the mass market, it changed the technology industry forever, it was controlled by a megalomaniacal asshole for much of its existence—but you’d have a hard time getting even the staunchest critic of the company to argue its products weren’t groundbreakingly pretty. Alas, … Continued
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Tech NewsCommerce
Amazon Erects 79-Foot Cylindrical Shaft in Times Square
Look, I’m a straight woman with the maturity level of a 13-year-old boy. I am willing to admit that maybe—maybe—I sometimes see phalluses where they don’t exist. But this thing totally looks like a dick, right? Amazon announced today that it had erected the “largest Times Square advertising installment ever,” which is actually a 79-foot-tall … Continued
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Tech News
Marissa Mayer Officially Rides Her Zamboni Off Into the Sunset
It’s been a bumpy ride, but it’s finally over. Today, Verizon announced the completion of its Yahoo acquisition at roughly $4.5 billion, giving us all the gift of a fancy new subsidiary named Oath and officially ending former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s tenure. Tucked away in the very last paragraph of Verizon’s announcement was the … Continued
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Tech News
Russian University Lovingly Erects Giant Concrete Monument to Peer Review
Life as an academic is hard, if you discount the summers off and the whole tenure thing. Assuming you’ve ever submitted a piece of research for publication, chances are you’ve had to go through the process of peer review—an often soul-crushing ordeal during which you and your ideas are metaphorically flayed by a jury of … Continued
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Tech NewsOh God Paul Ryan Just Discovered GIFs
Despite the fact that he has become a meme several times over the course of his miserable life, Paul Ryan is apparently new to one of the most basic forms of internet expression: GIFs. During an interview today with detritus collector Mike Allen, Ryan talked about a lot of things that I did not bother … Continued
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Tech NewsHere Is the Porn Video That Played in DC’s Union Station Last Night [NSFW]
Last night, a display screen in Union Station—one of Washington DC’s main transit hubs—found itself moonlighting as a tiny pornographic theater. Now, Gizmodo can exclusively reveal footage of the incident, and I can assure you that, one, it’s definitely pornography, and two, I have never had a commute this stimulating. While not technically safe for … Continued
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Tech News
Rich Person Marissa Mayer Bravely Forgoes Her Bonus Over Yahoo Security Clusterfuck
Yahoo had a bad time in 2016. It took its last symbolic breaths as a crusty, once-powerful internet company, it had its email service banned on Capitol Hill, and—oh yeah!—it disclosed it suffered not one but two massive hacks of user data. So, in what appears to be an effort to either drum up some … Continued
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Tech NewsArtificial IntelligenceThis Piano-Playing Computer Makes Me Feel Less Lonely But Also Really Weird Inside
Most people, with the exception of those who live beneath the subway grates and Ted Cruz, don’t like to be alone for too long. We need—nay, crave—the attention of others. When that attention comes from an intelligent piano-playing machine, however, shit gets weird. A.I. Duet, a new experiment from Google, does just this. It’s pretty … Continued
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Tech News
Marissa Mayer Will Resign From Yahoo’s Board, Yahoo to Get a New Dumb Name
Marissa Mayer will resign from Yahoo’s board of directors and the company itself will be renamed Altaba Inc., according to documents filed with the SEC today. The documents state that following the close of Yahoo’s $4.8 billion sale to Verizon—which, by the way, is still up in the air—Mayer and several other members of the … Continued
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Tech News
Theranos Is Getting Rid of Nearly Half of Its Staff
Elizabeth Holmes’ struggling startup Theranos will lay off 155 workers, or roughly 41 percent of its staff, according a new report from Bloomberg. The remaining 220 employees “will focus on developing a new product, a tabletop blood testing product called the miniLab.” The news was confirmed in a press release from Theranos. “These are always … Continued
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Tech NewsIs This Apple’s Click Wheel iPhone Prototype?
Sonny Dickson has images and video of what he claims is the iPod-based interface—including a gnarly-looking, on-screen click wheel—that almost beat out iOS for the iPhone. Whether it’s legitimate or not, let me just say this: thank Christ it didn’t see the light of day. Dickson says the system was known internally as AcornOS, and … Continued
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Tech NewsCadillac’s New Car Subscription Service for Rich People Makes Me Hate America
At some point, somebody at Cadillac asked themselves what they could do to make the lives of the wealthy even easier. The answer they came up with, it seems, is BOOK by Cadillac. BOOK by Cadillac is not, as you might assume, a nice book filled with Cadillacs. It is in fact “a first-of-its kind … Continued
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Tech News
14 Large Posters Bernie Should Have Brought to the Senate Floor Instead of That Trump Tweet
Yesterday, Bernie Sanders and his Facebook fan pages took the internet by storm after the cranky senator printed out one of the President-elect’s tweets and set it up on the floor of the US Senate. The moment went spectacularly viral and launched a thousand memes. But while Twitter can occasionally come up with some funny … Continued
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Tech News
Photoshop Contest: What Large Poster Should Bernie Have Brought to the Senate Floor?
On Wednesday afternoon, Bernie Sanders decided to print out a big ol’ copy of a Donald Trump tweet and bring it to the floor of the United States Senate. The incident happened during a debate about the repeal of Obamacare, and the tweet in question was this one: As we noted earlier today, Bernie was … Continued
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Tech NewsGlide Across the Water Like a Douchebag Swan on the New ‘SwagSurf’
Swagtron, the ludicrously named company that previously went by the equally ludicrous name Swagway, has some new gear for 2017. One of the gadgets is called “SwagSurf,” and it’s exactly what it sounds like: a chariot that will (supposedly) carry you across bodies of water like a shitty millennial Jesus. Swagtron is set to show … Continued
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Tech News
‘Top Tech Guru’ Pens Beautiful Fox News Op-Ed Showing Just How Blisteringly Out of Touch Tech Can Be
The tech industry relies, in part, on the hot air pulsating forth from its own grandiose delusions to keep it going. As president and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, a powerful industry trade group, Gary Shapiro has an important role in belching out plenty of that hot air—and he recently did just that. On … Continued
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Tech News
Oh Jesus, Look at This Snake Eating a Wallaby
In many ways, Australia is great: Twisties, beautiful beaches, hot sports men. In other ways, however, it’s a nightmare hellscape dreamt up by a drunk Salvador Dali after a visit to Jurassic Park. Our latest example of this comes courtesy of Bernie Worlsfold, a resident of the northeastern coastal town of Kuranda. Worlsfold shared some … Continued
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EartherClimate Change
America’s Scientists Are Terrified by Trump
On Monday, 37 top scientists signed a letter to President-elect Donald Trump imploring him to keep the Iran nuclear deal intact. The pact, said the group—which includes Nobel laureates, various nuclear experts, and the president of the Federation of American Scientists—is a “critical U.S. strategic asset.” While its list of signatories is impressive, the letter … Continued
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Tech NewsSocial MediaThe Year in Encouraging News
This year sucked, didn’t it? I don’t need to remind you of all the ways in which this year was bad. (But here are a few anyway: Trump, mass death and destruction, the blatant, mainstream adoption of weaponized hatred, the deaths of several beloved public figures, Trump.) But sometimes, all you want is for a … Continued
Sophie Kleeman
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